A Thermos for Valerie
by Bluemoonalto
Summary: Complete! Danny arranges a meeting with Valerie, to clear the air and end their feud. But is she ready to listen? One way or the other, she's leaving with a Thermos.
1. Chapter 1

Summary: Danny arranges a meeting with Valerie, to clear the air and end their feud. But is she ready to listen? One way or the other, she's leaving with a Thermos.

Author's Note: Although this story focuses on Danny and Valerie, it is not a pairing story. There's nothing remotely romantic about the action here.

Disclaimer: Butch Hartman created 'em and Nickelodeon owns 'em. I borrow 'em for a little while with no intention of disrespect or hope of personal gain.

**A Thermos for Valerie**

by Bluemoonalto

**Chapter 1**

Half past three a.m. At least it was Friday night–no, very early Saturday–so I would be allowed to sleep late in the morning. Wounded, weary and sore, I dragged myself down to the lab to release Bertrand into the Portal, then fetched the first aid kit from the wall near the foot of the stairs.

I heal very fast and am pretty much immune to infections in my ghost form, but if I didn't get this wound on my arm cleaned up and covered before changing back, I'd have to explain bloodstained pajamas to my mother on laundry day. I unzipped my jumpsuit and stripped to the waist, used a couple of gauze pads to wipe the oozing ectoplasm away from the three parallel slashes running from just below my left shoulder halfway to my elbow, then wrapped the area with a fresh bandage secured with adhesive tape. I put the kit away and stuffed the goopy gauze deep into the waste basket, where it wouldn't be noticed by nosy parents.

I had just one last job to do before heading back to bed. I floated over to the highest shelf above the work bench, where five brand-new Fenton Thermoses stood in a gleaming row. Mom and Dad had been working on these all week, having redesigned the release button to make it a little harder to activate by mistake. I had already promised the first one to Tucker, who had a history of accidental releases.

I set my own dingy, battered Thermos on the shelf beside the new ones. Its surface had been dulled, dented and scratched over the last few months, from being repeatedly dropped, stomped on, slammed against walls, trees, boulders, parked cars. . . . The sturdy shoulder strap that Sam had rigged for me (I need to have my hands free!) was frayed in spots and singed in others, and in several places was blotched with stubborn, pale green stains. (Ectoplasm just won't come out in the wash. Thankfully, my jumpsuit mysteriously renews itself with each transformation, or it would be stiff with stains and held together with hundreds of mends and patches. Sometimes I'm amazed that _I'm_ still in one piece.)

Mom and Dad had worked late into the night to complete the final assembly on these five Thermoses, so they could enjoy a leisurely Columbus Day weekend. All that was lacking now was the final, _final_ step, which they knew nothing about and which only I could accomplish. I pulled Tucker's new Thermos down from the shelf and held it between my hands, enveloping myself and the device in a cloud of blue energy. After a few seconds, the Thermos began to vibrate as it came to life under my will. I did a quick test, firing off a blue-white beam at the ceiling, then placed it back on the shelf and picked up the next one.

_This _one was for Valerie.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Butch Hartman created 'em and Nickelodeon owns 'em. I borrow 'em for a little while with no intention of disrespect or hope of personal gain.

**A Thermos for Valerie**

by Bluemoonalto

**Chapter 2**

The sign warned me that the park closed at sunset, which had come about an hour earlier. The iron gates were locked, but after glancing around to check for witnesses I phased right through the bars. No doubt Valerie would find her own way in. Neither one of us was in the habit of letting pesky signs—**_No Trespassing_, _Keep Out_, _Danger!_**—stop us from going pretty much wherever we wanted to go.

I had chosen the day (Saturday) and the time (eight o'clock) with care. After a year of fighting ghosts I had become pretty adept at predicting the timing of attacks. They tended to come just before my curfew (to get me in trouble) or in the deepest hours of the night (to deprive me of sleep) or in the middle of the day (to increase my risk of exposure). The evening hours were usually the most peaceful and uneventful of the day. Furthermore, ghosts attacked more often on school nights, wearing me down along with my grades. So eight o'clock on a Saturday was the perfect choice for my fateful (but hopefully not _fatal_) confrontation with Amity Park's not-so-mysterious red-suited ghost hunter.

Making sure that Valerie would be available at the same time had been tricky. She usually works Saturday evenings at the Nasty Burger, in part (I assumed) because of the low level of ghost activity on those nights. Making sure she would have _this_ Saturday night off without arousing her suspicions had required a bit of unethical slight of hand. . . .

Okay, I had overshadowed her boss while he wrote up the schedule. So _sue_ me.

As I trudged up the long, grassy slope towards the picnic area, I gradually became aware of the residue of the evening's thunderstorms soaking through my shoes. I looked up to the eastern sky, where the thunderclouds had broken up and a nearly full harvest moon was rising, swollen to almost three times its normal size. (It's amazing how that illusion never goes away.) Dammit, I wish I could have _flown_! It would have been faster, easier, and my feet wouldn't have gotten wet. But I had steeled myself for this evening's work: to meet Valerie as a human and tell her what I needed to tell her as a human and take the consequences, whatever they might be, as a human. Wet feet were a minor inconvenience.

My path took me into a thick copse of trees at the top of the hill, just beyond the Centennial Fountain. I turned on the Fenton All-Spectrum Ghost Illuminator (a souped-up flashlight that had given me the rampaging heebie-jeebies until Jazz pointed out that it wasn't actually called the Fenton All-Spectrum Ghost _Eliminator_) and picked my way through the dark woods, my footsteps rustling softly in the carpet of damp leaves.

I emerged from the trees into the picnic area at three minutes before eight. Valerie was waiting for me. By unspoken agreement we sat opposite one another at a picnic table near the center of the clearing, and I tossed my backpack on the table between us. She leaned back, arms crossed, gave me a bored look and asked, "So. . . what was so important that I had to meet you here? You _do _realize that the park is closed after dark?"

"I wanted to make sure we wouldn't be overheard." I paused, bracing myself for what was to follow.

I had planned this conversation for a long time. I'd even rehearsed it a few times with Sam, although she didn't have much patience for the exercise and told me, every single time, that if I ever went through with it, she'd kill me if Valerie didn't kill me first. If Sam had known about the new Thermoses, she'd probably have been here tonight, desperately trying to stop me. . . .

Opening move: "We're friends, right, Valerie?"

She countered with a long, suspicious stare. I had, after all, arranged to meet her alone on a moonlit Saturday night. "_Just_ friends. Like I told you before, Danny, my life is way too complicated for me to have time for. . . for anything more than that right now."

"I understand that." So far, so good. I took a calming breath. "Do you remember last year, when we had that stupid flour sack to take care of, and I found out that you had that job at Nasty Burger? The one with the Nasty Ned costume?"

"Yeah." She grinned, just a little. A crack in her armor.

"I filled in for you a couple of times after that, so you could have some time off." Take it slow, take it slow. . . .

"I remember. It was real nice of you."

"I did it because we were friends. Well, at the time, I guess I did it because I _wanted_ us to be friends. And friends should help each other."

She was starting to get a little suspicious. Which was pretty much what I expected, since I was starting to sound like a Hallmark card. So I plowed ahead, anxious to get past the first hurdle. "I want to help you with your _other_ job."

Silence.

"I want to help you with your ghost hunting."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

"_My_ ghost hunting?" She put on a good show of innocent confusion, I'll give her that. "Did you fall and hit your head?"

"Relax, Valerie. You don't need to play games. I've actually known for a long time–almost a year." I rubbed my hand across the back of my neck and tried to sound apologetic. "Sam and I were. . . uh. . . you know. . . we were _together,_" I pointed to a clump of laurel near the edge of the clearing, "right over there. Uh, we were. . . uh, behind those bushes, uh, and you. . . well, you kind of. . . interrupted us." I actually blushed. I didn't enjoy lying to her about that, but I needed my story to match Valerie's memory of that day–which was one reason why I had chosen this particular place for our meeting.

"What makes you think that was _me_?" By the sharply rising tone of her voice, I could tell that she was frantically trying to figure out a way to talk herself out of this. (I recognized the tone, because I have to talk myself out of these sorts of conversational traps every single freaking day.)

"You said something like, 'Loser love! I always knew you two geeks would end up together,' which, by the way, Sam was really pissed about." She let a tiny smile slip across her face, which might have given her away if I had not already been certain. "The mask covers your face, but you have a very distinctive voice. A really, uh. . . beautiful voice." I had almost said, "sexy voice," but something stopped me.

"The first thing Sam said when you zoomed off was, 'That sounded like Valerie!' She was right, it did sound like you. And two days later, we're all sitting together at a basketball game and even though you'd never given me the time of day before, suddenly you're all, 'So, Tucker tells me your parents hunt ghosts,' and the next thing you know there's a ghost dog in the gym and. . .well, you disappeared right after that."

I paused for a few moments in case she wanted to voice any more objections. She just frowned, caught up deep in a memory. "You're always running off on some kind of mysterious business during school. You're injured a lot, your grades are slipping. . ." I could have been describing myself, but I was willing to bet that she'd been too busy with her own problems to notice mine. "And then, for a few days last spring, I thought maybe we would be able to. . . you know, have something. . . and then you're all full of that noble garbage about how your life is 'too complicated' to spend time with me."

"Is _that_ what this is about?"

"No!" I reached across the table to clasp her hand. "This isn't about dating, this isn't about _us_. This is about having something–a purpose, a mission–that's so important that you have to let all the ordinary stuff slide. I_ get _that. Don't push me away, Valerie! Let me help you with the complicated stuff."

I could almost see the wheels turning in her mind. I had blindsided her, and she resented it. The funny thing is, she didn't say "no" right away. She paused and looked thoughtful, not as though she was actually thinking about accepting my offer of help, but as though she were trying to think of a way to blow me off without hurting my feelings.

"Danny," she said gently, "It's real sweet of you, but. . . I work _alone_. Besides which--you do remember that I have a ninth degree black belt? No offense, but I hear you barely passed the President's Fitness Test."

"Oh, you're right," I agreed happily. "Physically, we're not in the same league at all." That was true on so many levels! But now was not the time to play _Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better_. Her ego was due for an nasty blow before the evening was out, so this stage of my plan called for compliments. "That's not the kind of help I'm talking about. The whole thing with the armor and the weapons, that's _your_ thing. Me, I'm a _Fenton_. We know a lot about ghosts. I have access to resources, weapons, tools, a freakin' huge library with reference materials you won't find anywhere else–"

"I don't spent a whole lot of time doing research. I'm more the 'shoot first, ask questions never' sort of ghost hunter."

_Like I hadn't noticed._ "–or maybe I could just be somebody you can call in the middle of the night and say, 'I am so pumped, I nailed two ghosts tonight!' Or, 'God, this sucks so much. I'm exhausted and the damn ghost got away!' I could be a resource, a sounding board, a voice of encouragement, a shoulder to cry on. . . ." I squeezed her hand. "I could be a _friend_."

"I don't know. . . ."

She was resisting. I had anticipated that, it had come up the same way when I rehearsed this conversation with Sam. It was a temporary setback, but she'd come around. I had her the moment I mentioned _weapons_.

"You _are_ a friend, Danny, but I don't want to get you involved in this. It's too dangerous for you."

"But not for you?" I was ready for this objection. "Val, I know you and your Dad were out of town when the ghost pirates kidnapped all the grownups in town. But I'm sure you heard about it. . . ?"

"Yeah, I heard folks talking about that at school. Somebody mentioned that you were part of the rescue mission."

"A _part _of the rescue mission? Is that what they said?" I should have expected that. Why should they let the facts get in the way of their close-mindedness? To them I was a wimp, a geek, a loser. But here and now, I was not going to lie down and take it. "I don't know what they told you, but I _planned_ and _led_ that rescue mission! We used the weapons from FentonWorks, and we boarded the pirate ship from the Fenton Emergency Ops Center. I may not be in your league, but I _can_ help you."

She shook her head slowly, her face a mix of doubt and pity. "Danny. . . ."

"Look. We don't have to decide anything right now–all I'm asking is that you consider what I'm offering. No commitments, no promises, just hear me out." I glanced down at my watch. "It's only eight-twenty. How about we talk–just _talk_–about ghost hunting for. . . say, the next half hour. Just a friendly conversation between two friends who share a common interest."

"Just talk?"

"Absolutely. Just talk. I talk, you talk, we _talk_. And after we talk for half an hour about ghosts, maybe you'll see that I have something to offer. And, if you'll give me thirty minutes to convince you that I have something to offer–that I can actually help you–I'll give you this." I reached into my backpack and pulled out the new Fenton Thermos, placing it upright on the table between us.

She gave it a glance, then dismissed it with scorn. "I already have one of those. Whatever it is, it doesn't work."

I smiled. My plan was back on track. Thirty minutes should be enough time, though it would be rough going–for both of us. I'd have to keep my head in the game, stay calm, avoid doing anything that might set her off, and pray that she wouldn't hurt me too badly in the end.

"It's called a Fenton Thermos. I don't know where you got yours, or why yours doesn't work, but this one works just fine." I twisted off the lid and fired a blue-white beam straight up into the night sky. "It's a trap: you point it at a ghost, and the ghost gets sucked inside." I waved my left hand across the beam, easily resisting the gentle suction. "Go ahead, it doesn't work on humans."

She gingerly extended her hand and let her fingertips intercept the beam. "It's cold!"

"So. . . are you interested?"

She looked across the table at me, holding me in a level gaze as though she were trying to read a coded message in my eyes. Until tonight, she had thought of me as a naive kid, a silly ninth-grade crush, good for some casual company when there weren't any ghosts to hunt. Tonight she was seeing a whole new Danny.

_She had no idea._

"You're on."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

I shut down the Thermos and twisted the cap back into place, plunging the picnic area back into semi-darkness, illuminated only by the moonlight filtering through the trees. In the dim light I was barely able to make out Valerie's face, gazing back at me with mild curiosity, waiting patiently for me to deliver on what I had promised.

Although I had planned this conversation carefully, I didn't want to sound scripted–so I paused, let my eyes wander a bit, cleared my throat as though I were trying to figure out where to start.

"So. . . what do you get out of it?"

She continued to stare at me for a few seconds, puzzled. "Get out of what?"

"Out of hunting ghosts. Like, what does it do for you? What's the payback, the reward? You can't be doing it for the money, because there isn't any. The city doesn't even pay my folks any more for the consulting work they do. And since nobody knows it's you, it can't very well be for fame or even gratitude."

"Revenge," she said. "At least, that's what it was at first. I wanted to get back at the ghost who wrecked– hell, I've told you all this before. It's ancient history."

"Yeah, I remember that story. But that's what got you _started_. What's in it for you _now_?"

"I don't know. Responsibility. . . anger. . . justice. . . ." She struggled to come up with each word. "I'm still pretty pissed off at the ghost boy, so I guess that still belongs in there. Uh, personal satisfaction? A chance to put my karate training to good use. And. . . oh God, this is going to sound dumb. And selfish– "

"Probably not. I was thinking maybe you would say that it's _fun_."

"Well, it is!" She seemed relieved to admit it. "When my ghost alarm goes off, I feel like. . . like I come alive. Like the whole rest of my life is just drudgery– I can't wait to get back into the action. And then there's this massive, wicked adrenaline rush, when the tables turn and I've got the damn ghost on the run. . . ." She closed her eyes as her voice faded away, her head tipped back as though she were basking in strong sunlight, a secretive smile on her face.

"That's the really awesome part, isn't it?" I asked, caught up in her reverie. Her eyes snapped open, startled. "I mean, I've seen you in action. You're. . . really incredible, do you know that?"

She blushed.

"You're so graceful in the air," I added– and I meant it. For me, flying comes naturally. How she does it is a mystery to me. "How fast can that flying thing of yours go, anyway?"

"It's called a rocket sled. And I'm not really sure how fast it can go. I've never had anybody clock me."

That surprised me– but of course, she didn't have Sam and Tucker to train with. "I could get my hands on a radar gun, if you're interested."

"Yeah, that would be cool. The thing is, the problem gets to be maneuverability at high speeds, so I'm better off with short bursts of speed and the element of surprise." She demonstrated with her hands, banking and rolling around imaginary obstacles. "If it came down to a race, I'd probably lose because the damn ghost can fly _through_ stuff, and I _can't_."

"Chalk up a big advantage for the ghosts," I commiserated.

"Yeah, so I just gotta focus on sneaking up on him."

"I bet you're real good at that." She _was_ real good at that, as I was painfully aware. But I had never before thought about our battles from her perspective. Since my strategy was always to put as much distance between us as possible, and escape as quickly as possible, it made sense that she would always make a point of sneaking up on me from behind– and that she would always shoot first.

I glanced down at my watch; as much fun as this was, time was slipping away and I had a lot more ground to cover.

"What would you do with a ghost when you catch one?" I was very careful to say 'when' rather than 'if.' She may not have been successful with her hunting so far, but I wanted to keep her in a good mood.

"Why in the hell would I want to catch a ghost? I don't want to catch him, I want to _destroy_ him."

"And. . . how's that working for you?" A little too snarky, perhaps, but I was getting a little frustrated at how she kept saying 'him' instead of 'them.' "The thing is, I. . . I don't think you can actually _destroy _ghosts. Hurt them, yeah. Ghosts can absolutely feel pain. Shoot them, shock them, pummel them into a pulp, make them wish they'd never set foot within a hundred miles of you, yeah. But you can't destroy them. It would be like. . . killing something that's already dead."

"Well, that sucks. Are ghosts immortal, then?"

"Immortal? No. More like. . . uh, _post_-mortal, I guess. Eventually, most ghosts work through whatever it is that's keeping them here, and they fade away, or move on. That part's not altogether clear."

"I never thought about it that way before."

"You see? This is exactly the sort of stuff a Fenton would think about." (Actually, this is exactly the sort of stuff _Jazz_ would think about, now that she's been dragged kicking and screaming into the family business. I do a little light reading on the subject when I can, but she's plowing through the Fenton rare book collection as if my life depended on it–her contribution to 'Team Phantom.')

"But, wait a minute! What about your parents, with all their weapons– aren't they trying to destroy the ghosts?"

"They've invented a lot of weapons, sure, but their ultimate goal is to capture a ghost so they can study it. That's why they got into the ghost hunting business in the first place, for the science. Only, when there are lives at risk, they'd rather send a ghost back to the Ghost Zone than let anybody get hurt."

"The Ghost Zone. . ." she echoed, thoughtfully. She had some first-hand memories of the Ghost Zone, and the fact that I knew about it and called it by its proper name probably improved my cred.

"Mom has this weapon, she calls it the Fenton Bazooka. Great big monster gun, shoulder mounted–" I hefted an imaginary weapon up onto my shoulder by way of illustration. Valerie was practically drooling. "I can barely lift it, myself. Anyway, Mom used it to send about a dozen ghosts back to the Ghost Zone when they tried to take over City Hall last year. It's not as easy to use as a Thermos, but you don't have to be quite so accurate, which makes it a good choice when you're dealing with a lot of ghosts in one place. It projects a temporary Portal that'll send any ghost within a one-meter radius back to the Ghost Zone."

"Wait a minute. Why _don't_ they use that Thermos thing? If it's good enough to trap a ghost, then what's to stop them from doing their research?"

Oh, great. The last thing I needed was to get Valerie all enthusiastic about dissection. "Uh. . . well. . . the Thermos will _hold_ a ghost, but you can't exactly study it while it's in there. You'd have to let it out first, and once you do that you'd have one seriously pissed off ghost on your hands."

"So, what they need is some kind of. . . like, containment field or something."

"Yeah, pretty much. A really powerful one." And me, a thousand miles away when they test it. "You know, I'm not entirely sure I want them to succeed at this. I mean, the thought of them doing experiments on a ghost, even one of the nasty ones. . . it's kind of. . . well, gross. I get queasy even thinking about my Mom and Dad doing that stuff down in our basement." I stared down at my hands. This was pretty personal, but I was actually starting to feel comfortable talking to Valerie. "I know they're geniuses, that they are experts in the field, that nobody's more qualified to do this kind of work, it just. . . ."

"You kind of wish they _wouldn't_ do this kind of work."

I looked up at her, stunned. "I didn't think you'd understand."

She grimaced. "_I'd _probably volunteer to help them with the experiments, but then, they're not _my_ parents. They've loved you and taken care of you your whole life, and you don't want to think about them doing anything that would cause pain–even to a ghost."

I sighed. In a weird sort of way, she _did_ understand.

She reached across the table, touched my shoulder. "Would it help," she asked tenderly, "if you knew the ghost was really evil? That it really deserved it?"

This was a surprise. I'd been hoping to steer the conversation in this direction, but Valerie drove us right there. "Do you. . . do you_ not_ think that all ghosts are evil?"

"I think" she said, pausing to frame her answer, "I believe that all ghosts are. . . _wrong_. They don't belong here. They should be. . . forced to stay on their side of the Ghost Zone. Portal. Whatever. They shouldn't be _here_." She twisted one of her bangles, as if she were adjusting a wrist-mounted weapon. "But I do think that some ghosts are. . . _more_ evil. More evil than others. Some ghosts deserve to be punished, to be _destroyed_–"

"And some ghosts don't?"

"I guess not. But some ghosts _do_."

"You got that right." It was all I could do not to jump up on the table and do a happy dance. Ladies and gentlemen, we have achieved a breakthrough!

"Okay," she said, pointing at the Thermos on the table. "So, let's say one of these days I do manage to catch a ghost in that thing. What happens to him?"

I shrugged. "Simple. You bring the Thermos to me, and I'll release the ghost back into the Ghost Zone through the Portal in the lab at FentonWorks."

"You just let him go? What the hell kind of solution is that? He's still free, and he'll just come back, right? And I'll have to catch him again, and you're release him again, and he'll keep coming back, and coming back, and coming back. . . ."

_Welcome to my life._ And there she was, talking about 'him' again– and I was pretty sure that 'he' wasn't the Box Ghost. Damn. I reminded myself to stay focused, don't let on that you noticed, steer the conversation back to ghosts in general. "But normally a ghost will need to rest and replenish its strength for a while, especially if it used a lot of power or was weakened in some way while it was here. That's one reason why my parents build weapons that can _hurt _ghosts– to weaken them so they can't come back so quickly." That earned me a bloodthirsty smile of approval. "Theoretically, if you hurt it badly enough, it might not come back at all. It might stay in the Ghost Zone, or pick some other place to haunt."

"You guys have much luck with that?"

"No, not really." I said, with a sigh of resignation. "They just keep coming back."

"Yeah. I figured as much. Tell you what: why don't I just catch the ghost, take the Thermos, and let it just. . . disappear? Stick it in a closet or something like that."

"Well, first of all, you'd have to make absolutely sure that the ghost is never, never, ever going to get out. _Ever. _ Because if and when it does, it's going to be furious and it's going to want revenge. And second. . . ."

I checked my watch again. The stress of keeping up my side of the conversation was starting to take its toll on me. But this was all part of the plan, so I kept going.

"Let me put it this way. . . think about the most evil person who has ever lived: Hitler, bin Laden, whoever. If you were a judge, and you had the power to sentence that person to an eternity in solitary confinement, held immobile in a prison cell smaller than a coffin, with no light, no sound, no sensation of any kind, could you do it? Would you do it?" I popped the lid off the Thermos. "Look inside this thing. Stick your hand in there, if you can. My hand won't fit."

She didn't try to put her whole hand inside, but she did take a look and stuck her index finger inside far enough to feel the inner surface. The inside of a Fenton Thermos is a smooth, pale grey cylinder, a little less than five inches across and about a foot long, made of an alloy that was developed by NASA. The bottom is gently curved, to eliminate weak spots, and the inside of the lid has a similar curve of the same material, and a thin neoprene gasket on the lip to form a tight seal.

"Is it. . . painful?"

"No," I said, then stopped myself. How would Danny Fenton know what a ghost would experience inside a Fenton Thermos? I quickly rephrased my answer. "It shouldn't be. Uncomfortable, yes, but it's not designed to cause pain. But try to imagine spending a whole day inside there. A week. A month, a year. Ghosts don't age, they can't die. They may not be alive, by our definition, but they are _sentient_. They're aware, they think, they feel. What kind of crime would it take, to sentence someone to exist in there forever, alone in the dark?"

She stared at the open Thermos, but said nothing. I wished I could know what was going through her head. I wished knew whether she was weighing my own "crimes" as a ghost.

I pushed forward. "Would you do that to a ghost if you could? Does the fact that the Box Ghost broke somebody's best china mean that he deserves that kind of punishment? How about the ghost dog that wrecked Axion Labs and got your dad fired—would you shove a dog inside a Thermos and leave it in there forever? It was just a dumb animal, and it died, and it couldn't rest until it found its squeaky toy."

I let that hang in the air for a moment, wondering whether she would notice.

"Wait a minute. . . ."

Look out, the excrement's about to hit the air circulation device.

". . . how do you know so much about the ghost dog?"

**Author's Note:**

This chapter was very difficult to write–and I should know, because I had to write it twice!

In the original rough draft of "A Thermos for Valerie," chapter four was just a one-sentence placeholder: "Insert conversation about ghosts, ghost hunting, ethics, etc." I gradually fleshed it out in between efforts to complete other chapters, and I promised myself that I wouldn't post chapter three until chapter four was finished (except for the sort of polishing that I refer to as 'rearranging the deck chairs").

By last Friday I had a complete draft of chapter four, five pages long, that flowed smoothly from the end of chapter three to the beginning of chapter five, hitting all the plot points I needed it to hit. I was giving it a touch-up on Sunday evening when it suddenly hit me: although the chapter was complete, logical, organized and even intriguing, it was totally out of character. I had lost Danny's voice.

So I did something I've never done before: I discarded the entire chapter and started over from scratch, the result of which you have just read. I apologize for the long delay between chapters; the problem should not recur because the rest of the story is already pretty close to being finished.

I believe I have managed to respond privately to all my reviewers to date, but I also want to thank you publically. The thrill of battle may be what brings Valerie to life, but feedback is my drug of choice. And if anybody is interested in a more give-and-take discussion of issues raised by the story, I've been hanging out in the "Theories and Musings" forum.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

My heart was pounding in my chest, my stomach churned with anxiety and I thought I just might hurl. If I hadn't been so stubborn, if I wasn't so absolutely certain that this was _necessary,_ I'd have bailed. But I often find that I'm capable of doing whatever I have to do even while my brain is screaming, _'Stop! Don't! You're gonna DIE!' _

"I know about the dog, because. . . I'm the Ghost Boy."

She stared at me, blank-faced, which is pretty much what I expected at this point. I gazed right back at her, trying to ignore the sweat trickling down my forehead. Keep it calm, get her past it. . . .

"Well, _half_-ghost, actually."

She tightened her face in an expression of sarcastic disbelief, and said, "That's _not _funny."

"It's not meant to be funny."

Silence. Her eyes narrowed.

"Uh. . . Danny Phantom? Danny Fenton? Get it? It's sort of a pun. . . ."

She gave a barely discernable shake of the head, and whispered, "You're _lying_."

"You know, the ghost you've been trying to destroy for the last year? I'm sitting right here in front of– "

"_Prove it_."

"–you. Huh?"

She exploded up from the bench, somersaulted across the table and, in one fluid motion, twisted and pivoted over my right shoulder, knocking me face-first into the table and pinning me down with a hand on my left shoulder and a knee in my back. I heard the Thermos tip over and roll down the table behind my head. In the next heartbeat she had my right wrist in a vice-grip, pulling it sharply up my back in a move that brought tears to my eyes. "Prove it! If this isn't some kind of sick, twisted joke, then _prove it_!"

She wanted me to transform. She wanted to see solid proof of my ridiculous claim. Since the accident I'd grown to realize that there is some kind of vague difference between my human appearance and my ghost appearance, a difference I can't see when I look in the mirror (except for the obvious stuff, like the white hair) but which effectively prevents people from recognizing me as a ghost. Sam and Tucker insist that my face looks exactly the same both ways, but I don't believe it–my own mother once stared at me from just a few feet away, and saw nothing but a manifestation of ectoplasmic energy and post-human consciousness. I knew it must be the same way for Valerie: and now she was being asked to reconcile the creature she hated with the boy she once dated.

"Prove it!"

"_Ow_! Um… you and me. . . in the Ghost Zone, handcuffed together by Skulker so he could hunt us, and I couldn't move and you were trying to get us out of there on your rocket sled, and I said you should try to open one of the doors and you picked one and opened it but there was a train—_ow_!"

She cut me off by leaning down with her knee on my back and yanking on my arm again. "_He_ could have told you that," she spat.

"Why would I tell anybody about _that_?"

"I don't know, and I don't care—I want _proof_!"

Okay, she wanted proof. What was I willing to give her? What could I say to her, what information could I give that would convince her? My plan called for me to stay in my human form until she could accept that Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom are one and the same, and that I meant her no harm. Until that happened, I had to trust her not to harm a human. I had to trust her good sense not to murder a classmate.

But here we were, frozen at an impasse. I tried to stay still and look unthreatening; but she continued to pull my arm upwards until I worried that my shoulder joint just might pop out. As a human, I was at her mercy. As a ghost, I could break free. . . .

_No! That wasn't part of the plan!_

I compromised. I took three slow breaths, then made my right arm intangible. I felt it disappear— physically only, as I did not choose to make it invisible as well— and heard Valerie gasp and curse with frustration as she lost her hold on my wrist. I clenched my teeth and forced myself to hold my arm in that same, uncomfortable position, so she would see and comprehend what she saw. Then I slowly phased it down into my back, through my chest (suppressing a shudder as my ghostly fingers passed through my beating heart) and out through the picnic table under me. It would have been so easy to phase my whole body out from under her, but I wasn't trying to escape— I was only trying to prove my claim.

I lay still, my intangible right arm still hanging down through the table. _Trust her_, I told myself.

Her left hand and knee still pinning me down, Valerie picked up the shiny, new Fenton Thermos from the table and swung it down in an arc, slamming it into the back of my head behind my right ear. As I slipped into unconsciousness, I thought I heard footsteps running away through the grass.

She didn't say another word.


	6. Chapter 6

Author's Note:My deepest apologies for the delay in posting. And a million thanks to Shimegami-chan for the sage advice about the lingering unintended consequences of the chapter four re-write. All is well, and we proceed with. . .

**Chapter 6**

When I finally dragged myself back to reality, my head was muddled, the left side of my face bore an imprint of the rough boards of the picnic table, and my feet were freezing inside my wet shoes. As far as I could tell, I was alone; the picnic area was silent except for the rustle of the wind in the trees.

I found Valerie's Thermos lying in the grass a few feet away from the table. I picked it up and stuffed it into my backpack alongside my own, then switched on the Illuminator to light my way home. Alone or not, I stuck with my original plan, and walked home on my own two, wet feet. After all, Valerie might be watching.

I made it home by a quarter to ten. I mumbled something about having a headache and needing some sleep and barely acknowledged my mother's 'Good night, sweetie!' as I trudged up the stairs to my room. By ten o'clock I was warm and dry, dressed in my pajamas, seated cross-legged on my bed, staring at Valerie's Thermos on my desk and trying to figure out how I could possibly have done this any worse. (Well, I guess _dead_ would have been worse.) I knew exactly where I had made my mistake. I sabotaged my best defense the moment I demonstrated that, even as a human, I am not entirely human.

My thoughts wheeled in circles. Should I try to contact Valerie tonight? Let her sleep on it and call her in the morning? I just couldn't let it end this way. I had to convince her to take the Thermos.

My head was throbbing. I retrieved the jumbo-sized bottle of ibuprofen from the drawer of my bedside table and shook three tablets into my hand.

"Water?" Jazz's entrance, half-filled glass in hand, was eerily well-timed. I wish I knew how she did that! I popped the pills into my mouth and nodded my thanks while gulping down the water. "Where are you hurt? Should I get the first-aid kit?" she asked briskly, professionally. I gave a tiny shake of my head, pointing to the tender spot behind my right ear. She sat on the bed beside me, then gently brushed my hair away from the site of the injury and explored it with her fingertips. "Hmm. The skin isn't broken, but it's pretty swollen. You _should_ go the hospital, get your head examined."

"Very funny. You should totally write that one down in your _Witty Banter _notebook."

"You want to talk about it?"

"Not especially."

"I'll get you a bag of peas to use as an ice pack." She headed for the stairs, leaving the door slightly open. As her footsteps faded on the stairs, my computer bleeped. I put the empty glass on the bedside table and went over to my desk to read the message:

**YOU HAVE THIRTEEN MINUTES LEFT. **

**TOMORROW, SAME TIME AND PLACE. **

**V**

It was written in bold, uppercase letters, in a font so large that those two short sentences filled half the screen. It was terse, imperious, and rude. But it was also a sign of hope: she was willing to meet me again, to hear me out under the terms of the original agreement. The fact that she had knocked me out cold no longer seemed important. I immediately set about typing an answer:

**Of course I'll meet you, tomorrow at eight. Don't worry, everything's going to be all right. **

**Danny**

With my hand on the mouse, ready to send, I paused and stared at the message. Why did I say that everything would be all right? Was I trying to convince her not to worry, or was I trying to convince myself? She might not take it well, if she thought I was trying to pull her strings. I deleted that sentence. I tried substituting, "I really enjoyed talking with you tonight," but decided that sounded a little too smarmy and deleted that, too. I was struggling to compose a sentence around the word "appreciate" when I heard a faint footstep directly behind me.

I jumped up and spun around, knocking the chair to the floor as I rose up into the air and very nearly blew Jazz's head off. "Don't sneak up on me like that!" I yelled, a few wisps of unused power wafting upward from my clenched right fist.

"Whoa! Jesus, Danny, what's gotten into you? You nearly scared me to death!"

She had no idea how near it was. I was on a hair trigger. Valerie had frightened me far more than I realized, far more than I was willing to admit.

Jazz tossed me the bag of frozen peas, distracted by the enormous message on the computer. "What is that, some kind of death threat? Has Technus started announcing his plans by IM?"

"It's not Technus, and it's not a death threat." I held the peas against the tender spot on the back of my head as I dropped back down to the floor. "It's just Valerie, confirming that we'll meet again tomorrow night."

"Valerie–" She suddenly noticed the extra Thermos sitting on the back corner of the desk. "Oh my God– you're not actually planning to go though with it, are you? Tell Valerie you're. . . ?" She could read the answer in my guilty expression. "Oh no, don't tell me. . . you _already_ told her! _Valerie_ did that to you!"

I didn't answer, letting my silence speak for me. I put down the peas, uprighted the chair and sat back down at the keyboard, erased my earlier response and typed:

**I'll be there.**

**Danny **

"I trust her, Jazz. You don't know Valerie the way I do. She's a good person, she just hasn't had all the facts. I know she'll come around, now that she knows the truth. She won't hurt me." I sent the message, then logged off.

"Apparently, she already hurt you! What did she do, whack you over the head with a rock?"

"With this." I reached across the desk and touched the Thermos, which was still as good as new except for the shallow, two inch dent near the base.

"She knocked you over the head with the Thermos? The Thermos you were trying to _give_ to her? Are you so dense that I have to draw you a diagram?"

"She was _scared_! I caught her off-guard. I didn't prepare her enough and she wasn't ready and I _scared_ her. She reacted with her instincts, I can't blame her for that."

"I can. Hell, Danny, she knows where you _live_. She even knows which room is yours! Did you ever stop to think about that?"

"She's not going to bother me tonight." I pointed at her enormous message on the computer screen. "She's going to meet me tomorrow. Why can't you believe that I know what I'm doing? It's working pretty much how I practiced it with Sam. She's mad, but I know I'm getting through to her. She wants to meet again tomorrow night, she wants to finish this."

"She wants to finish _you_." She read from Valerie's message, "'You have thirteen minutes left.' And what the hell happens at the end of thirteen minutes?"

"I give her the Thermos."

"What is it with the Thermos? She's armed to the teeth with weapons that can hurt you, that could probably kill you, why would you give her something else she can use against you?"

"Because I trust her."

With that, I headed for my bed. I crawled between the covers and rolled onto my left side. Jazz sat down on the edge of the bed and gently laid the bag of frozen peas across the sore spot on my head. "At least. . . promise me you'll take Sam and Tucker along to back you up. Valerie doesn't have to know they're there, but they can help you if she. . . ."

I sighed. I was suddenly very sleepy and it took a lot of effort just to answer her. "Tucker is at his cousin's wedding in Dayton, and Sam's parents took her up to the lake house for the long weekend."

"Which means they're not here to talk some sense into you. How convenient. Fine: then I'll come."

"No, you won't," I murmured.

"You can't stop me from following you," she retorted.

I closed my eyes and snuggled down into my pillow. "Jazz, you do not have the slightest idea how many different ways I can stop you from following me."

I must have drifted off to sleep soon after that, because I remember dreaming that I flew Jazz out to the bird refuge on Petersen Island and left her with a family of pelicans who offered to teach her how to fish while I went to the park to meet Valerie. When I awoke several hours later, Jazz was fast asleep in a chair near my window, her hand resting lightly on the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick in her lap. I got rid of the warm bag of peas, then overshadowed her long enough to get her back to her own bed. I knew she would resent the intrusion, but if I woke her up we'd just have another argument and I didn't have the strength for that.

Sunday came and went with surprising calm. Although I caught Jazz staring at me during breakfast, she didn't say much of anything. If she remembered that she had fallen asleep in my room and woken up in her own bed, she didn't mention it. I spent most of the day at the town library, working on a school assignment and. . . oh hell, I was hiding. Hiding from Jazz, hiding from the apparition of a red-clad figure sneaking up on me from behind. . . .

After supper, I retreated to my room to psych myself up. I reviewed the status of my plan, tried to anticipate the kinds of questions Valerie would ask, revised my answers. I was fairly confident that I was well-prepared for any variation. I was just putting my shoes on for the walk to the park when Jazz appeared in the doorway, cradling a musty, leather-bound book in her arms.

"Danny, you have read Crispus Farthington-Smythe's Essential Guide to Ethereal Spirits, haven't you?"

"Oh gosh yes, every night before I go to sleep," I said sarcastically, earning an annoyed glare from Jazz, who should have known better than to ask such a stupid question. I relented. "Sam read it, gave me the Cliff Notes version."

The last thing I wanted to do at that moment was get into a discussion of academic ghost-ology with my sister, but there's no stopping Jazz when she's got her scholarly on. She closed the door and stood with her back against it, then spoke with all the dry authority of old Farthington-Smythe giving a lecture at Oxford: "'It is the nature of a ghost to be obsessive,'" she began.

"Jazz–"

"Just shut up and listen! Farthington-Smythe wrote, 'It is the nature of a ghost to be obsessive. It is this obsessive nature that ties the spirit to the human plane, unable to complete its journey to the Other Side. But the obsessive nature is also a ghost's greatest weakness. Obsession causes a ghost to repeat unproductive behaviors, to revisit dangerous situations, to make the same mistakes again and–'"

"Technus blabbers on about his plans, Skulker's at the mercy of Tuck's PDA, Desiree has to grant every wish, even the ones that work against her! I _get_ it!"

"_You_ have an obsessive nature, Danny. It's part of who and what you are, now, and you need to be aware of it and accept it and make allowances for it." I glared at her, but she just kept going. "Obsession is a_ weakness_. You've been muttering about giving a Thermos to Valerie for weeks. When Mom and Dad decided to produce some new ones, you started talking about it out loud. I know you've been rehearsing this scheme with Sam, and that she told you that you were nuts. We never thought you'd go through with it!If you actually do this. . . if you give a Thermos to Valerie, how do you know she won't turn it on you?"

"I trust her," I muttered.

"You trust her. That makes no sense, whatsoever. She hasn't given you one single, solitary reason to trust her. She wants to kill you!"

"She didn't take it!" I exploded. I grabbed Val's Thermos from my desk and shook it at Jazz. "I told her who I am, what I am, what this thing can do to me, and she left it behind. I _trust_ her!"

"_After_ she knocked you out cold. She's had a full day to think about this. She's had a full day to let this fester. And I'm asking you, right now: _What if you're wrong_?"

"I'm _not_ wrong." I shoved the Thermos into my backpack and slung the pack over my shoulder. Jazz glared at me and braced her back against the door. "This is ridiculous, Jazz You can't stop me from leaving." I went intangible and lifted both feet off the floor. If she wouldn't move out of the way, I'd phase right through her.

She stepped to the side, opening the way for me to slip past. I became solid again and headed for the door. As I drew even with her, she touched my shoulder and pleaded softly, "What if she traps you in the Thermos and never lets you out?"

I couldn't answer that. There was no good answer for that– at least, no answer that wouldn't make Jazz even more anxious and overprotective than she already was. With weary resignation, I said, "If I don't make it home by morning, you know where to start looking for me."


	7. Chapter 7

I've been responding to many reviews privately, but I've missed the sense of give-and-take that I used to get when posting fic to an e-mail list (back when I was involved in the _Due South _fandom.) So, since the feedback in public, I'm going to try responding to at least some of the feedback publically as well, in the hopes of getting some conversations started.

**Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet:** First person POV is not something I've done much before, but this story demanded it–because so much of the "action" takes place in Danny's head. (There's a lot of "action" going on in Valerie's head, too, but for the purpose of this story the reader is supposed to rely on what Danny _thinks_ Val is thinking.)

**angel4U 185:** Thanks so much for the kind words about the Danny/Jazz dynamic in chapter 6. It certainly was a pleasure to write! Originally I had intended for Danny to field a "what the hell do you thing you're doing?" phone call from Sam and a series of e-mails from Tucker during the day covered by chapter six, but the chapter worked so well with Jazz I decided to leave Danny's best friends out altogether.

**Cali:** I'm giving you the official Sam Manson "If You Go Through With This I Will Kill You If Valerie Doesn't Kill You First" Award for chapter 6. You are definitely in synch with just about everybody _except_ Danny. What is driving him to do this, anyway?

**Kassii:** I'm sorry you had to wait a little while longer for more of Danny's encounter with Val. I hope that the chapter below (and the next, and the next) will make up for it. (Although it may give poor Cali an ulcer before it's done.)

**KatrinaKaiba:** I'm glad you enjoyed chapter six, as it was a little out-of-step with the rest of the story. The conversation with an outside observer was necessary to give the reader to a clearer peek into Danny's head, and I got such a kick out of inventing an "expert" for Jazz to quote!

**Person:** I'm glad to know that last sentence made you cringe. It was supposed to. Heh-heh-heh. . . .

Thanks to everybody who sent feedback, I'm very grateful! We're a little more than half-way through the story, and there's quite a bit of cliff-hanging to come. So check your harnesses and secure your ropes!

oooooo0oooooo

**Chapter 7**

_Second verse, the same as the first;_

_a little bit louder, a little bit worse._

I phased through the iron gate again, twenty-four hours later, and set off over the hill toward the picnic area. The grass was wet, the woods were dark, the full moon was just beginning to rise. I could have taken a different route, come early, varied the routine–but for some reason, I didn't. (Jazz could probably write a thesis paper about it.) I emerged from the woods at three minutes before eight, and Valerie was there, waiting.

In her full battle suit, with a combat rifle-sized ecto-gun pointed directly at me.

"Do. . . do you really think that's necessary?" I could hear the hot whine of the fully-charged weapon, feel the sweat trickling down my back. Had Jazz been right? Had I misjudged her so badly? "Look at me, Valerie. You see me in school every day. We're _friends_. I swear I'm not going to hurt you—just, please put the weapon down."

"I'll put _my_ weapon down when you put _your_ weapon down," she sneered, closing one eye and sighting along her ecto-gun at my chest. "But you can't do that, can you?"

I glanced down and realized that I had instinctively reacted to her armed state by building up an ectoplasmic charge in my right hand, which was now glowing ominously. I felt my face flush with embarrassment, as though she had caught me lurking invisibly in the girls' locker room. I let my arm fall loosely to my side and shook my hand vigorously, dispersing the power harmlessly into the air.

She stayed in a firing stance, but lowered the gun until it was pointing at my knees instead of my heart. "You got thirteen minutes left, ghost. I'm gonna ask the questions, you're gonna answer them. Sit down over there," she ordered, indicating the same picnic table where we had talked the night before, "but stay facing me, and keep both hands out where I can see them."

As we circled around each other, slowly, deliberately, I tried without much success to read her facial expression through her mask. I sat down on the bench with my back to the table, and carefully placed my hands on my knees. I took a deep breath, focusing my attention on trying to slow my racing heartbeat, fighting the urge to go ghost or do anything else that might set Valerie off. I had been counting on my human appearance to protect me, but as a human I was weak, slow, clumsy and unlikely to survive a direct hit from that gun. I reviewed my options: unable to fly, I could phase into the ground, or become invisible and try to get the hell out of her line of fire….

No. No! Reacting with my powers, even defensively, would just perpetuate the conflict, defeating the whole purpose of this exercise. I had to trust her, be honest with her and give her the Thermos.

She pulled off her helmet, dropping it on the ground beside her. Her bountiful, curly hair was pulled back tightly and tucked neatly inside the collar of her suit, making her face seem unusually narrow and severe. "So. Was it your mother, or your father?" She asked the question coldly, as professional as any hard-nosed detective on _Law and Order._

"Huh?"

"You said that you're half-ghost. Which parent did you get it from: your mother, or your father?"

"No! No. . . no, no, no no! You've got it all wrong. . . uh, I mean. . . ." My stomach turned over, just thinking about it. _Ew!_ "Both parents human! Born human! Fully human until last year. . . ."

"When. . . ." she prompted, with a rolling hand gesture that urged me to get to the point.

"It's. . . complicated. There was an accident in the lab, and I almost died, but somehow I didn't, and now I'm half ghost."

There followed a long, awkward silence. I only had a few minutes left, and I didn't want to waste it going over the details of the accident, or the horrible days of convalescence, confined to my room while my new powers perversely went off at random intervals. I had far more important matters to cover.

"I assume that Sam and Tucker know all about this?"

"They were there when I. . . uh, had my accident. And my sister found out later, but she's cool about it. She covers for me sometimes."

"Ah." For a moment she looked thoughtful, almost wistful, realizing just how much she was an outsider. "And I take it they all know about me?"

"Yeah," I admitted. "We all knew."

"Great. I bet you all thought it was pretty funny, laughing at me behind my back."

Considering the circumstances, with my head still throbbing from the night before and a deadly weapon pointed at me now, 'funny' seemed a pretty strange concept. "Nobody thinks . . . we. . . Val, you scare the hell out of us! You've been trying to kill me, after all."

Her expression suddenly darkened, and she abruptly changed the subject. "Why are there so many ghosts in Amity Park?"

"There are. . . a couple of different reasons." I took a moment to frame my answer. "In part, it's because of me. Because of what I am. My existence. . . _offends_ them. You remember Skulker, how he wanted to have my 'pelt'? He's not the only one. But from a practical standpoint–do you remember, in the Ghost Zone, all those doors?"

She nodded, with just a little shudder.

"Those are portals. Gateways between the Ghost Zone and other planes. Most of them were created by individual ghosts, for their own use, to be able to go back to whatever it is in _this_ plane that they can't let go of."

"And. . .?"

"In the basement of FentonWorks there's a portal that my parents built, using technology instead of ghost energy. They only intended it to be used as a kind of window, to _see _into the Ghost Zone, but it turns out it doesn't really work that way."

"So the ghosts come into Amity Park through the portal in _your basement!_?"

"Pretty much." I blushed. "When the portal is open, ghosts come and go as they please. When the portal is closed, they have to spend a huge amount of energy to squeeze through from the other side–but not as anywhere near as much as it would take to create a new portal from scratch. And by the time I kick their butts, catch them and release them back into the portal, they're usually so weak, they can't come back through for a while, as long as the portal is kept shut."

"Yeah. . . I remember you said that yesterday. How long is 'a while'?"

"Uh. . . ." Tucker was the one who kept statistics. I just fight them as they come. "A month, a couple of weeks, maybe less– I guess some of it depends on how much damage I do before I use the Thermos."

Valerie gave a frustrated sigh, clearly unimpressed by my way of dealing with the problem. "Why would you ever open the portal, then?" Why not close it permanently, or destroy it altogether?"

"Yeah, right. Like I'm going to tell my parents that? They're the 'experts'," I said, using my fingers to put the word 'experts' in air quotes, "and I'm just a fifteen-year-old kid who can barely pass math. The Fenton Ghost Portal is their life's work, and you think _I'm_ going to tell _them_ to destroy it?"

She pondered for a moment, then made a mental leap. "Wait a minute! Your _parents _don't know?"

"Uh. . . ."

"You. . . you _hypocrite_!" She flew at me (not literally, her rocket sled was leaning against a nearby tree, but it was a pretty impressive move nonetheless) and knocked me backwards onto the picnic table. Only this time, I was on my back with her left hand on my throat and the business-end of her ecto-gun just inches from my left eye. "You stinkin', cold-hearted, half-dead-freak **HYPOCRITE**!"

Uh, oh. Didn't see _that_ one coming.

oooooo0oooooo


	8. Chapter 8

**KatrinaKaiba:** Danny didn't anticipate Valerie's extreme reaction because _I _didn't anticipate it. This particular section of the story was added very late in the writing process, long after the story outline was supposedly finished. I was working on the conversation in chapter seven, with Danny explaining how Sam, Tucker and Jazz are the only ones who know his secret, when all of a sudden Valerie was screaming "Hypocrite!" in my head. It was a very weird feeling.

**Bushranger:** What a great idea! But sadly, Jazz is not coming to Danny's rescue this time. I actually did come up with a sizable list of ways that Danny could stop her from following him, but in the end decided to leave that up to the reader's imagination.

**The Person Who Writes:** I'm glad you enjoyed the "was it your mother, or your father?" bit. Ever since I heard Vlad refer to Danny as a _hybrid_, I've been longing to find a way to address this poor use of language. Can you blame Valerie for jumping to the wrong conclusion?

**Victoria Hughes:** Yes, Danny is very much trying to stay in control of this situation, but he may be in over his head. The crucial question is. . . _why is he doing this_?

If I didn't answer your question here or privately, it's probably because the answer is coming up right now!

oooooo0oooooo

**Chapter 8**

Despite all my meticulous planning, I had totally failed to anticipate this. I had outed Valerie to her father, while keeping my own double life a secret from my parents. And now the edge of the table was digging into my hip (I was going to have _such_ a bruise) and the hot whine of her weapon was burning my cheek and setting my teeth on edge.

"I had a great thing going, with my Dad working nights he never suspected a thing, and then you arrogant–" she removed her hand from my throat and punched my shoulder, "self-righteous," she punched again, hard, right where Bertrand had clawed me, "patronizing," (at least she wasn't using the gun!) "_hypocrite_ had to go and ruin it for me!"

"Okay. I totally deserved that. It was a desperation move, and a dirty trick, and I'm sorry." I was, actually. For some reason, I had never thought about the hypocrisy before; I had just filed Val's outing under 'Ends Justify the Means' and forgotten about it. Mission accomplished, ghost defeated, why dwell on the unsavory details? "I had to stop you from taking the Ecto-Skeleton. I knew you'd been injured, and I knew that I'd have a better shot at defeating the Ghost King– and I'd be less likely to die in the process. But. . . I should have found some other way to stop you."

"You sounded pretty pleased with yourself at the time. Why should I believe you now?"

"I. . . I did what I had to do. This is what I am, Val– I've had to do a lot of things that I'm not proud of. I skip school, I neglect my homework, I sneak out of my house at all hours of the night. I lie to my parents, lie to my teachers, and sometimes I take advantage of my friends. I do whatever I have to do to stop the damn ghosts, because. . . because that's what I have to do."

"You do whatever you have to do because that's what you have to do? That is the stupidest piece of circular reasoning I have ever heard. You're just like every other ghost: you do whatever you want, whenever you want, and to hell with us regular people. What makes you so damn special?"

I thought about it for a moment. Of course I was special, in a whole bunch of ways that I really didn't want to brag about while she was holding a gun to my face. But being "special" wasn't necessarily a good thing. Having ghost powers had ruined my grades and pretty much wrecked any hope I had of someday making it into the space program. I'd been pummeled, mauled, burned, crushed and tortured. I was exhausted most of the time, and my parents had started to ask me pointed questions about illegal drug use. And then there was the spirit-crushing weight of my responsibility to protect Amity Park, which I could see stretching year after year after year into the future. . . .

I sighed. "Look at it this way. I know you've got some kind of alarm, some kind of ghost sensor built into that suit of yours. If you've got the suit with you, then you'll know if there's a ghost nearby. Do you know how I can tell there's a ghost nearby? I get this disgusting, crawly feeling inside my throat, and my breath comes out all blue. And I can't turn that off! I can't leave it in my locker if I have to take a big test in 3rd period, and I can't put it away when I go to bed at night– 'cause it'll wake me up! It doesn't matter if I'm sick, if I'm injured, if I'm exhausted from being awake for three nights in a row–"

"Yeah? Well, it sounds to me like maybe you _need _a little parental support," she snapped. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't march right over to FentonWorks and tell your parents just how _hard_ your life is! One good reason!"

"Because. . . because it wouldn't change things with your father, and it could make my life a lot worse. Your father tried to stop you from hunting ghosts, but my parents. . . ." I suppressed a shudder. "My parents would try to _help_ me. They'd follow me everywhere I go, watch my every move. . . Valerie, I couldn't deal with that. Mom and Dad know so much about ghosts, but I can't have them protecting me, or controlling me, or getting in my way. Not to mention they might want to use me as a test subject, or a case study, or put me on display to prove to the world that--"

"Why should I care? I'm really not very invested in making your life easy, you know. Maybe having them on your case might keep you out of my way, the way having my father on _my_ case has kept me out of _your_ way!"

"Please. . . ." I hated to beg. I suddenly longed for one of our old battles, trading shots and insults high in the sky over Amity Park. Instead, I was lying here on a picnic table with her gun to my face, forcing myself not to use my powers. "Find some other way to get back at me, if you have to, but please don't tell my parents."

She finally pulled the weapon away. I let my head roll to the side, relieved and weary, then gingerly pulled myself up into a sitting position. "Maybe I'll think about it," she said. "Maybe. But I'm not anywhere near finished with the stuff you're going to have to apologize for."

Backing away slowly, keeping the gun at the ready, she retrieved a battered piece of red armor from behind her rocket sled. Without a word, she tossed it on the ground between us. A chill ran down my spine as I recognized the chest-plate of her original ghost-hunting suit, a softball-sized hole burned right through its center, green-tinged scorch marks around the edges of the hole marking the damage as my own handiwork. Not that I could ever forget doing it.

"How are you going to explain _this_?"

oooooo0oooooo

**Author's Note:** I had a completely different version of Danny's "please don't tell my parents" speech drafted, and then I saw "Reality Trip." Oh, heck! I had to come up with a completely _different_ set of reasons why Danny doesn't want his parents to know his secret. I may never be able to forgive "Reality Trip" for wasting such a magnificent source of tension and drama in the show!


	9. Chapter 9

**acosta perez jose ramiro**: I'm glad you found chapter 8 to be intense. I was worried that Danny might come across as _too _apologetic there, but that really did seem to be the right attitude for the circumstances and for this point in the story. Valerie's "hypocrite" argument was truly the first aspect of their conversations that he did not anticipate in his plan.

**mrturtle518, Sasia, Ghostboy814 and shadowspinner1**: It's a relief to know I'm in good company in disliking _Reality Trip_– or at least that particular aspect of it.

ooooooo0ooooooo

**Chapter 9**

At that exact moment, I began to believe that my plan just might succeed. "Oh yeah, I would totally like to explain that." I actually had to clamp down and mask my relief, knowing that I would finally be able to set the record straight about the destruction of her ghost-fighting armor.

If she noticed the change in my attitude, she didn't let on. "I'm listening," she said coldly.

_Back on track. Do it just like you rehearsed it. Pretend you're talking to Sam, just ignore the gun._

"Your suit was being operated remotely by a ghost called Technus. He's the same ghost who took control of the master computer at Axion Labs and uploaded himself to the satellite. You remember?"

"Of course I knew that some damn ghost had overshadowed my suit, trying to get me in trouble, trying to get to me by hurting–" A light was dawning. "By hurting. . . _you_?"

She had probably intended to say, "By hurting _Danny_," until she remembered that I was sitting right in front of her. There it was, the crack in her wall of certainty. Until this moment, she had been able to blame Danny Phantom and pity Danny Fenton at the same time.

I pressed forward. "Technus knows who I am– all the ghosts do. He was talking to me, taunting me, the whole time. He used your suit, your weapons, right in front of the school, with students and teachers all around– and he would have used every dirty trick he could to keep both of us out of his way while he cracked the security codes at Axion. You kept him busy, with nothing but a tree branch and some keys. I saw a little of it, and Sam and Tucker told me about the rest. You were awesome!"

She gave me a sharp glance that said, _get on with it._

"When I finally got into the fight, as Danny Phantom, I saw you crouched behind the trash can near the steps. I knew you were safe, and I _knew_ that I was fighting Technus. _Only_ Technus."

I could almost see the light bulb come on as her memories shifted to incorporate my point of view. Six months ago she had tried and convicted Ghost Boy of attempted murder, never suspecting that _Ghost Boy _had known all along that he was destroying an empty suit. From her astonished expression, and the way she lowered her weapon, I was pretty sure I had convinced her of my innocence.

But there was still one more aspect of that battle I needed her to remember. I knew it was going to be pretty awful for her, but I hoped she just might be able to understand it anyway. . . .

"Do you remember how I did it?" Without warning, I thrust my right arm forward, toward an imaginary opponent standing about three feet to her right, hand cocked back as if I were firing an ecto-blast from my palm. She flinched, but otherwise remained still. "One shot, to take off the right arm at the shoulder." I reached back, then snapped my arm forward again, aimed a little lower this time. "A second shot, and I blew the left leg off at the knee."

She shuddered, and her face looked a little green. For a moment I worried that she might just up and toss her cookies right there in the grass. But I didn't dare let up now that I was so close to breaking through.

"I should have stopped there. The suit was wrecked, Technus couldn't use it any more. But I didn't stop. I didn't _want_ to stop. You'd been using that damn suit to hound me for months, as if fighting ghosts every damn night and every damn day wasn't enough to make my life a living hell. If I had known that you would be able to replace it so quickly, I probably wouldn't have bothered, but. . . ."

I mimed a third ecto-blast, this time aimed at the battered chest-plate at her feet. I held that position for just a few seconds, long enough to make my point, then slowly returned my hands to my knees.

Breathe.

Breathe.

She said nothing, so I pressed forward. "In the past twelve months you have attacked me forty-nine times. Yes, I counted. Forty-nine times— and for the record, I have _never_ attacked _you_. Do you still have your arms and legs?" Okay, that was brutal. I felt almost sick, treating her this way, but I couldn't afford to back down now. "Any broken bones? Serious burns? Internal injuries? I know you've had some bumps and bruises, after all, I've knocked you off your sled a few times and when I blast a weapon out of your hand it's gotta sting."

My heart was racing, but I struggled to keep my voice even, calm, gentle. "Valerie, I'm a _lot_ more powerful than you think I am. Your armor, your weapons, your _human_ strength wouldn't have been able to stop me from killing you if that's what I wanted to do. But what have I said to you every single time you've attacked me?"

She let the ecto-gun hang loosely at her side. She swallowed, then whispered, "You said… you said you don't want to hurt me."

"Yeah, that's what I said. I meant it, too. I never, never, ever wanted to hurt you." Slowly I stood up, and she didn't raise her weapon. I took a cautious step forward, and she didn't try to stop me. I took two more steps forward, and she collapsed into my arms.

"Oh, Danny! I'm so sorry. . . ."

We're just about the same height and she's actually quite a bit more muscular than me, but at that moment she was just like a little child longing for comfort. I held her tight and rocked back and forth, her head resting on my shoulder. I stroked her hair and murmured into her ear, "I'm sorry, too. I should have trusted you sooner." We stood that way for a minute or two, just clinging to each other in the dark. I would never hurt her, and now she had no reason to hurt me.

Even so, as wonderful as it was to hold her, to accept her remorse and give unconditional reassurance in return, I couldn't relax quite yet. There was still a knot of tension gnawing at the pit of my stomach.

I still had to give her the Thermos.

ooooooo0ooooooo

Only two chapters to go!


	10. Chapter 10

**Ghostboy814 and Elemental-Zer0 :** Valerie's emotional collapse, from white-hot anger to exhausted regret, was quite a challenge to write. She's not one to do anything by halves, is she? I'm glad to know it worked for you.

**The Person Who Rights:** You made a great point about Danny's tendency to get fixated, with your example of the "Sam/Wes" ring from "Flirting with Disaster." There's definitely a reason why I titled this fic the way I did.

**Hikari of the Moon and acosta perez jose ramiro:** The very first inspiration for this fic came when I saw Danny destroy Valerie's gear in "Flirting with Disaster." I imagined him trying to explain it to her, and it seemed natural for him to demonstrate, as graphically as possible, that if he really wanted to kill her she would have been dead a long time ago.

**Zilleniose:** I'm glad you gave my Valerie fic a chance, even if she's not your cup of tea. As I promised in the introduction to the first chapter, this is not a pairing story. That hug y'all just saw at the end of chapter nine was the closest these two are going to get. In the mean time, I hope you (and other Sam adherents) appreciate that Danny rehearsed this conversation with Sam more than once. Feel free to imagine what that was like!

**Cali:** So, Valerie has been redeemed in your eyes? Wow, behold the power of fanfiction. She's definitely one of the great, multi-faceted characters of the show, which makes her a joy to write. Valerie's greatest weakness is that she doesn't have enough information. She doesn't know Danny's secret, she doesn't know that he (in his human identity) knows _her_ secret, and she doesn't know her benefactor's true agenda.

ooooooo0ooooooo

**Chapter 10**

When we finally pulled away from each other I glanced down at my watch and confirmed that my time was up– about five minutes ago. I went back to the table to retrieve the shiny, new (and only slightly dented) Fenton Thermos from my backpack. I held it out to her, patiently waiting for her to take it from my hand. She slung her weapon on her back and took the Thermos gingerly, by her fingertips on the lid and base, as if it might bite.

"It has a weird recoil, so I'd hold off using it on your sled until you've had some practice." We were back to business. I pulled my dingy old Thermos out of the backpack and looped the strap over my shoulder. "You should either brace it against your side," I stood beside her and demonstrated, tucking it into the crook of my elbow like a football, "or hold it with both hands in front of you. Grasp it like this– you're right-handed, aren't you?– and activate it by pressing. . . here." My Thermos sprang to life, its beam shooting harmlessly into the night sky.

Valerie copied my stance, rotating her Thermos until her fingertips rested comfortably on the trigger point. She aimed the mouth of the device toward the trees and activated it. Despite my warning, the recoil caught her off-guard and she nearly lost her balance, the beam veering wildly. "Dammit, Danny," she snarled, "it kicks _forward_!"

"Right– sorry! The Thermos is a vacuum, sucking inward; so I guess that would be just the opposite of the kinds of weapons you're used to using."

"Huh." She braced her feet and tried again, better prepared this time for the strong pull. "You were right. If I'd been standing on my sled just then, I'd probably have been thrown right off."

"Okay, look. This smaller button is the release. See?" The vortex reversed for a few seconds as I demonstrated. "Of course, you wouldn't want to use it under normal circumstances; just bring the Thermos to me after you capture something, and I'll release it into the Ghost Zone through the portal in the lab."

"Oh, do I _ha-a-a-ave_ to?" she whined, mockingly.

I glared at her, but I was pretty sure she was kidding, and it was a relief to see her sense of humor peeking through. "Yes. You _ha-a-a-ave_ to. Ready to try it for real?"

"Seriously? Bring it on!" Her smile was wicked, almost feral. She was primed for the hunt.

After returning my battered old Thermos to the table, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and did what she had wanted me to do ever since I had confessed my secret yesterday. ("Prove it!" she demanded, and I told her a _story_.) I released a spark of power near the center of my chest, then felt a chill stillness sweep through my body as I changed to my ghost form. The alarm on her wrist shrieked, and I opened my eyes just in time to see her flinch.

_My God, she's afraid of me._

"You can turn that thing off," I said with what I hoped was a reassuring smile. "It's just me."

She switched off the alarm, but the echo made my ears ring for several seconds after the sound stopped. Her wary gaze bounced back and forth, at me, at the Thermos, then back at me. "But. . . you want me to. . .?"

"Practice using the Thermos by capturing me in it? Yeah, that's the idea. Unless you want to wait around for another ghost to show up?" I took a cautious step towards her, and she quickly backed two steps away. Dammit, she still couldn't quite bring herself to trust me. "Valerie–"

"Don't!" She dropped the Thermos in the grass and swung her ecto-gun back into a firing position. "What is this, some kind of trick?"

Oh, damn. I thought we were past all this. "No! Not a trick. . . just. . . put the gun down."

"What. . . what do you want? What are you trying to get from me, _ghost_? Why are you doing this– what's in it for you?"

Anxious to defuse the situation, I changed back to my human form. Sam once told me that my human voice sounds gentler, less intense. "I already told you, Valerie: I want to help you. I gave you a tool you can use to be a more effective ghost hunter. Please, please believe me– I just want you to be able to trust me, the same way I trust you."

"Why should I trust a ghost? Why should I believe a single word you've said?"

"Because we're _friends_! Don't you understand? I gave you that Thermos, knowing you could use it against me, because I trust you not to."

She lowered the gun, but her voice was still harsh with suspicion. "Then why do you want me to use it on you now?"

"Practice. Proof." I went ghost again, and this time she did not flinch. "Just do it like I showed you, so you'll know how it works, then let me go. It's that simple."

She bent down to pick up the Thermos, staring at me with a mixture of resentment and dread. "How do you know I won't just leave you in there?"

"I don't." There it was again. Jazz had asked the exact same question. So had Sam before her, and so had Tucker. And I still didn't have a good answer. "But. . . do you remember that exercise we did during Outdoor Education in the sixth grade? You stood on a stump and fell backwards and you had to trust that we would catch you. I'm offering to fall backwards now, to prove that I trust you."

"You shouldn't!"

"But I _do_."

She shook her head with disgust and muttered something to herself– and then the mouth of her Thermos erupted in a vortex of cold, blue-white light. It missed wide, about two feet over my left shoulder, but she quickly wrestled it into submission and I felt the familiar, violent suction sweep me off my feet. I faded quickly into intangibility, then slipped feet-first into oblivion.


	11. Chapter 11

I've answered most reviews privately this time around, except in those cases where the review lacked a reply link. My deepest gratitude to all who took the time to let me know that they were reading. You've made me feel very welcome; I never received so much enthusiastic feedback in my days of writing _Due South _fanfic.

It's with a sense of trepidation and a little bit of sadness that I post this last chapter. Judging from the comments I have received in the last couple of days, I have a sneaking suspicion that this final chapter is not. . . how should I say it? It's not what you're expecting. But then, I think I've managed to catch you off-guard once or twice along the way, haven't I? If I have entertained you at all these last few weeks, please indulge me as I finish _A Thermos for Valerie _the way I always meant it to end.

It's not about the secret. It's not about forgiveness. It's all about the Thermos, and the question is. . . _why_?

ooooooo0ooooooo

**Chapter 11**

Silence. Darkness.

I trust her. I trust her I trust her I trust her I trust her.

Despite my frequent reassurances, I experienced a moment of blind panic when I felt the Thermos lid snap into place behind me. I wanted nothing more at that moment than to thrash around and scream, "Let me out! Let me out!"

Several months ago, Jazz made me calculate the interior volume of both the Fenton Thermos and the Fenton Weasel. She had been tutoring me in math (a hopeless cause!) and I had made the mistake of complaining that figuring out area and volume would never be relevant to my own life.

For the record: the inside of a Thermos is just a hair over 200 cubic inches–only about one-fifth the volume of the Weasel's receptacle (948 cubic inches). Having been inside both, I can honestly say that the Weasel is a luxury suite at the Ritz compared to a Thermos. Inside the Weasel I had been squashed and contorted far beyond a human body's tolerance, but I had still been _me_: my feet were _there_ and my head was _there_ and I could hear my Dad talking to me and I could talk back and he could hear me.

Being inside the Thermos was a different physical existence entirely. Still intangible, my ghostly form was compressed into a dense fog of consciousness. I imagined that I could sense the shape of my prison, my substance filling it completely from end to end, but I also knew that if the Box Ghost were to make one of his ill-timed appearances, and Valerie was feeling cocky, I just might find myself sharing my space with him. Oh, God—what would that feel like? How would we be able to… um… _recognize_ each other? Would we each be crammed into a space half the size of my current prison, end-to-end or side-by-side, or would our intangible forms mingle?

Oh, _ew_!

I contemplated some of the little, physical things a person can do to relax. I'd take a deep breath if I could. I'd close my eyes, if only I had eyes to close. I'd twiddle my thumbs. . . . My thoughts drifted to the device that held me, its smooth, featureless walls, the ingenious design, the solid construction. I tried to imagine Dad fussing over the schematics, Mom's delicate hands assembling the circuitry, the two of them taking a coffee break at the work bench in the lab, trying not to get cookie crumbs in the components.

It might have been my imagination, but I thought I could just make out a sensation of motion, as if the Thermos was being carried somewhere. How long had I been in here? It may have been as little as a minute or two, but it may just as well have been hours; there was no way to measure the passage of time. What was Valerie doing out there? Were we still in the park, or was she taking me somewhere else? She could stick me on a shelf in the back of her closet or throw me into the harbor and I'd never know the difference.

I trust her, really I do.

I thought back to our conversation the previous night. "Think of the most evil human being who ever lived. Hitler, bin Laden, whoever. If you were a judge, and you had the power to sentence that person to an eternity in solitary confinement, held immobile in a prison cell smaller than a coffin, with no light, no sound, no sensation of any kind, would you do it? What kind of crime would it take, to sentence someone to exist in there forever, alone in the dark?" I hoped she would reach the only conclusion a rational human being could reach. And yet. . . and yet. . . .

And yet, somewhere in the Ghost Zone, in a fortress outside of time,_ he_ was trapped– no, _I _will be trapped inside a Fenton Thermos. Forever alone in the dark, by my own hand.

'It is the nature of a ghost to be obsessive,' said old Farthington-Smythe. Totally true. I had begun to recognize my own obsessive nature soon after Walker turned the people of Amity Park against me. _If I don't protect this town, who will_? Jazz was worried that some new obsession had taken hold of my mind, compelling me to take this extreme risk, but she couldn't possibly understand what was really driving me. I don't think anyone could truly understand.

I had met Valerie– strong, responsible, _adult_ Valerie– amid the smoking ruins of Amity Park, ten years in the future. Still fighting. Still trying to protect the people of this city from an insane, invincible, inhuman enemy. She is the one person I can count on to be ruthless enough to do what may someday need to be done.

I trust her. And this time, she has a Thermos.

ooooooo0ooooooo

Author's Note: You know how you sit in a darkened theater during the closing credits of a film, hoping that the director has added something extra: another scene, a blooper reel, maybe a little song and dance number? Well, this may be "THE END," but I will post a short epilogue on Saturday, to answer that _other_ question so many of you have been asking. In the mean time, I'll just say this: Danny trusts Valerie, don't you?

If you'd like to ask questions, offer contrasting theories or speculate about this chapter, I invite you to jump over to the Theories and Musings forum on this site (just click on the forums link in the upper right hand corner of the screen). I'll start a thread there about obsessiveness. Please do come, I'd love to "talk" to you some more!

Aegis: I couldn't reply to you privately, but I want to thank you for pointing out the time confusion at the beginning of chapter 10. I was referring to the thirty minutes that Danny asked for back in chapter 3, but I have changed the reference to eliminate the ambiguity.

NNF: I guess you figured out by now that there was no way I could switch POV for this chapter. I hope you weren't disappointed!


	12. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

A searing flash of light, a roaring 'whoosh,' and I suddenly found myself solid again, just in time to crash face-first into a cold, wet concrete floor. The light and sound ceased abruptly as Valerie clamped the lid back onto her Thermos. We were in a dark, confined space that reeked of mildew and Lysol and. . . something else I couldn't quite identify. I groped around and my left hand bumped into a cool, smooth, curved. . . .

"Oh, _gross_!" It was a urinal. I'd just planted my face into the floor of a public bathroom.

"Shhhh!" Valerie's voice was at the same time forceful and nearly silent. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I could just make her out, weapon at the ready, crouched beside the door about three feet to my left. It took me a moment to get oriented. One second I'm pondering the mysteries of the universe inside the Thermos, the next I'm sprawled out on a wet floor—no, please don't think about _that_—in a men's room with Commando Valerie.

I wanted answers, but I wanted to get the hell off the floor even more. I floated upwards about a foot, then made myself intangible for a few seconds to shed any lingering. . . ugh. . . dampness. "Okay," I whispered, "that's better. Who're we hiding from?"

"Skulker," she said, the sound of her voice tight with frustration even though it was as faint as a sigh. "Bastard snuck up behind me— I'd turned the damn ghost alarm off, thank you very much. I didn't have enough time to grab anything, I just dived into the bushes and booked out of there as fast as I could. Fortunately, he seemed to be more interested in the stuff we left behind than in capturing me."

"The stuff. . . ?"

"Of course, he didn't know that I had _you_."

"What stuff!"

"My rocket sled and helmet, your backpack--"

"My Thermos!" Somehow I managed to keep my voice low despite the panic. Skulker, in possession of a working Thermos, would be a catastrophe. "Jeez, Valerie, we have to get it back! Let's get out of here–"

"Hold on! We need a _plan_. For all we know, he could be waiting for us right outside."

I shook my head. "No. He's not close enough for my ghost sense. How far are we from the picnic area?"

"About five hundred yards through the trees, maybe a little more."

"How long was I in the Thermos?"

"Only about ten minutes."

Only ten minutes? It had seemed like hours. I held my hand out to her, palm up, as an invitation. She stared at it, puzzled and a little suspicious—as though I had offered her a dead fish. "What's that for?"

"Trust me."

She shook her head with resignation and clasped my outstretched hand. I gave her an encouraging smile and whispered, "Take a deep breath, stay calm, and whatever you do, don't let go of my hand."

"Just get it over with," she hissed.

I turned us both intangible, then floated us up and out into the open air. She shivered a bit when we phased through the bath house roof, but I have to give her credit: she didn't struggle or make a sound. Moments later we were fifty feet up, Valerie crouched on a branch of a towering tulip poplar, me floating right beside her. From this vantage point we could just make out the hulking form of Skulker, who was hovering a few feet above our picnic table while making a close but cautious inspection of my Thermos.

"Can you recall your sled?" I whispered, pointing at the controls on her wrist.

She glared at me. "Not without giving away our location."

"Right. Of course. Okay, then give me your Thermos." There was no way I was going to let her lack of mobility stop me from nailing Skulker and getting my Thermos back–or, failing that, destroying it so the ghost couldn't use it.

She started to hand it over, then snatched it back. "But. . . doesn't he have a ghost sense, too? Can you get close enough to use it without him knowing that you're there?"

"I don't know, to both questions. But the Thermos is only good for about twenty yards, and _my_ ghost sense is a lot better than that."

"And he has _your_ Thermos, which means if you get close enough to catch him, you're close enough for him to catch _you_. Here's a better idea: a two pronged attack. You draw his fire from above, staying out of range of the Thermos, and I'll get him from behind. He doesn't know you're here, but he can't sense me and he doesn't know I have this." She brandished the Thermos like a club. "We'll surprise him twice."

For a moment, I just stared at her, open-mouthed. "You're right, that's a better plan," I admitted, and it felt good to let her make the call. "Just. . . please watch where you point that thing."

She grinned wickedly. "You just stay out of my line of fire, _ghost_."

I returned the smile, eager for a fight.

"Let's go!"

ooooooo0ooooooo

Author's Note: What's next? I can tell you this much: there's not going to be a sequel. I don't write sequels. I do hope to write more _Danny Phantom _fanfic, but I don't have anything in the pipeline right now except a couple of vague notions that have yet to develop into actual plots. Even when I was very active in the _Due South _fandom, I was never very prolific. I have to be seriously inspired before I can write.

In the mean time, I am available to be a beta reader, something I'm quite good at, and I hope to be active on this site by participating in the Theories and Musings forum.

While I wait for the muse to arrive I am working on an Episode Guide, which will feature detailed episode reviews, nitpicks and other trivia. I'm writing up the episodes reviews in a semi-random order; that is, I'm doing them in the order that they appear on my video tapes. So far, I have three episode pages complete, so I can offer these samples of what is to come (hoping I do this right to fool the 'bot, delete the spaces in the URL):

geocities .com / bluemoonalto / brother

geocities .com / bluemoonalto / teacher

geocities .com / bluemoonalto / thirteen

Do please let me know if you think this is a project worth pursuing, or if you would like to participate in it. If there is a lot of interest, I may start posting these reviews on one of the episode-related forums here on or I may open a new forum specifically for episode reviews.

I'll archive _A Thermos for Valerie_ on my new site as well, and as soon as I have an index page built I'll put a link to the site on my profile page. (Right now my profile page link will take you to my _Due South _site, which has a similar Episode Guide for that show.) I'd appreciate it if you would let me know of any other places I should archive this story.

Again, a thousand thanks for your attention and encouragement, it's been a ball!

Love,

Melanie (bluemoonalto)


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